🏠 Locked flats in Hyderabad with owners abroad, rent them out or leave them shut?

Walk through any older building in Tolichowki or Mehdipatnam and you'll see it. A couple of flats with a lock on the door and dust on the nameplate. Owners are in the Gulf, or the US, or somewhere else, and the flat just sits there. Ask them and most say the same thing. Tenants are a headache. What if they don't leave. What if they wreck the place. Fair. But a locked flat isn't free either. Maintenance still has to be paid every month, pipes go bad when nobody runs the water, and the paint peels anyway. There's a tax side too, which I had to google. If the owner is an NRI, the tenant is supposed to cut TDS from the rent, around 30 percent if I understood it right, and file for it. Most tenants have no clue how, so a lot of these rentals just run on cash. Then there's the other option, a relative "looking after it". Works fine until there's a fight in the family. Some rent it to a relative's friend at half the market rate, just so someone's living there. Then the rent stops coming and nobody wants to be the one who asks. No idea what the right answer is. Those of you who own a flat here and live abroad, what did you do with it?

A flat that's been locked for five years usually needs a full plumbing job before anyone can move in. Pipes really don't like sitting dry.

You understood the TDS part right. The tenant also needs a TAN number to deposit it, which is why most of them run the other way. A CA can set it up once and after that it's a form every quarter. Costs a bit, but less than a flat sitting shut for five years.